Food wastage

[forgotmyusername1]

Apparently the average family throws away £800 a year of food.

I can honestly say we throw next to nothing.

What are your top tips for avoiding food wastage?

Are you a user or a chucker?

And there's nothing wrong with that, because you're not wasting it.

I know, I was replying to @Kalevala’s comment about people not just eating what they’ve bought. There’s always different options for meals in this house. That in itself doesn’t mean high food waste - I couldn’t be bothered with some of the measures people go to on this thread, I like flexibility and convenience to some degree.

We have minimal waste, usually:

Half a lemon gone hard
Sprouting garlic bulbs
A manky carrot
A manky sweet potato
Half bags of basil turned to slime
Half a bag of leaves
Half a pot of pasta sauce (dd)
Half bunch of forgotten spring onions
Occasional Half tub of Creme fraiche
Half tub of philly, gone mouldy
Mouldy satsuma
Black banana
One or two slices of mouldy bread

I'd say over the course of 6 weeks. Probably more like £60-£80 per annum - if that.

I also think there's a wider conversation to be had about the "make do and mend" mentality which we have lost as a society in general. My grandparents wasted nothing - food or other items - because they had grown up in wartime and there simply wasn't the option to buy more. Food was used creatively, they grew their own and swapped food with neighbours if one had a glut of courgettes and another a tree heaving with plums. They got shoes re-soled and darned holes in clothing, fixed things rather than chucking them away. Both grannies were excellent cooks as they needed to be to use what was available and feed children without the availability of ready meals and takeaways.

Now I'm not advocating going back to the 1940s as we've moved on and i'm pleased we have. But the wastefulness is not just food - it's fast fashion, and Temu "hauls" and celebrating each occasion by decorating your house with piles of tat from B&M. Food waste is just part of it.

How do people forget about food, unless it goes off in less than a week? Don't you see it in the fridge the day before shopping day when there's not a lot left and just use it when you cook next?

and if you suggest anything that saves resources you are accused of creating work

I'm pretty good at not wasting food but would always bin rice not cooked and refrigerated at proper temperature quickly, although especially risotto style rices. And bagged salad obviously, which can contain e-coli as well as salmonella. I try not to buy too much bagged salad anyway, other than spinach.

I'm cautious with meat but tend to use it within date.

I did get food poisoning from freezing beef casserole which was cooked but not eaten, and which I had frozen, so I'd be way more careful with rules around that in future. I was so unwell that the doctor had to come twice to inject me to stop the sickness, eventually. These things really do actually matter.

Don't they plan what to have in advance ?

Exactly @Misthios

I try not to waste things because I was brought up to think 'you just don't do that' even if you're not motivated by cost/money (I'm 50 for context, so also of the age where my grandparents were young adults in the war, so my parents were brought up in/just after rationing when 'make do and mend' was very much a necessity. We also weren't well off when I was a child, we had a large family and my dad was a miner so we went through the strike and he also had a couple of serious injuries that kept him off work for extended periods).

Reusing and recycling was very much a thing then too - clothes were handed down and mended, everything that could be bought and sold second had was (eg baby equipment, bikes etc). A chicken was a rare treat and made to last several meals. Fast food, coffee shops, bought sandwiches etc and all the associated single use packaging that ends up as litter barely existed. I remember taking newspaper, foil, cardboard etc to a woman in the village (I think she had an unofficial recycling business to provide an income - probably not something you could do these days with waste management licences etc).

And yet 'young people' blame their parents, so people around my age 'for destroying the planet' yet from where I'm sitting, their lifestyle looks far more wasteful than mine ever was at their age. Fast fashion, latest tech, expecting the heating on rather than wearing an extra layer etc.

I don't get how it is work just to use things up. If I have a leek from last week I'll use it instead of an onion. I'll throw extra yoghurt in a smoothie or on overnight oats. I have a teen boy so the fridge is looking pretty bare after five days though.

If you find a lemon that has gone wizened and the skin doesn't look appealing for zesting them if all else fails - half it and put one half in your dishwasher cutlery holder. Will make your dw smell nice and is naturally antibacterial

@Bjorkdidit yes you're the same age as me. Both my parents were born in the second half of the 1940s, just right at the end of the war. So granny couldn't spend a fortune on kitting out a new baby because the stuff just wasn't there to buy. Everything was handmade, or second hand.

My own kids are mid to late teens now and pretty good with the second hand and reuse thing, especially with clothes. DD and her friends swap clothes all the time for nights out which is a great thing and something I didn't really do myself at her age. Since moving away to uni she has also got much better with food waste as she's the one shopping and cooking.

I think for a lot of families it goes two ways. Either like my family these attitudes about being mindful of resources and respectful and reusing, second hand come down through the generations and it's something we think about and consider all the time just without consciously deciding to do so OR you're like my inlaws who are the same age and grew up in the same era, but actively shun anything reused or second hand and aren't concerned about waste whether it's food or anything else. Because it's their money, they earned it and people might think they are poor if they buy second hand.

The example given of ham being wasted - surely you can freeze ham and how much room would that take up in a freezer?

We have always either eaten leftovers the next day or frozen them and frozen bread and milk. We also often batch cook and freeze meals.

Up until last year we only had a fridge freezer and a small freezer for our raw dog food but we bought a secondhand tall freezer so that we can freeze more food. It also means when we see reduced items like bread very cheap we have room for it.

@Misthios we try to carve a middle road. Mid 60s. We minimise waste, have a pretty energy efficient home, have things like shoes and clothes repaired - I've just had the pockets of my 1984 Burberry trench repaired as they are back in fashion.

However, I draw the line at buying second hand clothes.

Do you not have room in your freezer for leftovers so you don't have to eat the same thing two days in a row?

I don't bother with use by dates. I have eyes and a nose that tell me if something is ok or not although I don't eat meat so don't have that to worry about.

I don't honestly see that it matters how long veg or fruit has sat in a fridge as long as it is still ok. I don't need a date to tell me that.

Yoghurts keep for weeks and I don't think I have ever looked at the date on cheese. We don't eat that much cheese so a block of cheddar can last a few months, Occasionally it gets a bit of mould on it but we just cut that off.

You can also use it to clean the microwave.

Put in a pint jug half full of water and microwave for a few minutes. The lemony steam condenses on the inside surfaces and soften any dried on food splashes.

Do you not have room in your freezer for leftovers so you don't have to eat the same thing two days in a row?

Or cook what you will eat. Or have it for lunch instead. Or have it two days later. This 'I don't feel like eating it so I just throw it away' thing is all a bit spoilt rich kid to me tbh.

Minestrone soup made this morning including the 1/4 of a tin of baked beans left from thur dinner and the slightly bendy carrots and celery from the fridge.

Hubby is now making banana muffins with 8 year old son with the slightly blackened banana's

Tea tonight- I am having pasta bake left over from tue and the kids and hubby are having burgers. The burger meat was purchased from bookers in May last year for a bbq but I massively over purchased so they are still eating them (fortunately they were cook from frozen). Hoping to see the bottom of the box before too long.

So a use it up kind of a day in this house.

I've discovered if you peel and chop a banana then microwave it until soft, it tastes like a banana fritter
Added some Greek yoghurt but you could do choc chips or cream etc

@mydogisthebest No, my freezer is usually really full. We often have just a little bit of chilli or bolognaise, about half a portion, that isn't worth freezing and I can never be bothered with batch cooking. I've never found yoghurt or cream where you can't tell that it's past it's use by date, and the same goes for cheese - if it's got to the stage where it's grown mould, it always has an u pleasant taste.

In the above I would

Grate the cheese and freeze so you have some on hand to top oven dishes.
Keep the bolognaise and chilli in the fridge
Make potato wedges and cook them. Once cooked put into an oven dish, top one end with chilli and the other end with bolognaise top with cheese and grill.

Might do that myself next week as sounds rather nice.

If I was eating by myself I'd be an absolute peasant and mix the bolo and chilli and have on a jacket potato

I reckon you can mash up anything and eat it on toast.

I am very, very cheap to run.

Oooh yes. And elevate it with a runny fried egg on top. Makes anything food of the gods actually I could happily have something on toast for tea every day

I am a chucker
I make lists buy exact amounts then something happens that x isn't made. Then don't feel like y. Then realise z takes 3 hours and it's 9pm on a Tuesday night

This week we mixed leftover chilli mince with leftover chickpea chicken curry and rice

It was actually rather nice